[R-sig-Debian] Debian backport on Stretch?

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 19 November 2017 at 19:02, Charles Plessy wrote:
| Le Sat, Nov 18, 2017 at 03:26:53PM -0800, Bill Harris a écrit :
| > Incidentally, you can see a bit more complete description at
| > https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/402560/how-do-i-install-r-on-debian-stretch-given-the-r-api-3-issue
| > .
| 
| Hi Bill and everybody,
| 
| if one installs R >= 3.4.2 from any source, then some Debian packages
| will be broken.  The change of r-api virtual dependency prevents this to
| happen.

Note that this was a transition forced upon the maintainer (ie me) by a group
consensus and override. I argued against it as the underlying issue was
rather minute [1] yet the imposition of the r-api change imposes this "omg
everything is borked" side effect I consider overkill.
 
| Since you install R from CRAN's Debian packages, can't you also upgrade
| the r-cran-* packages using `apt-get install -t stretch-cran34` as
| suggested in
| <https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/debian/#debian-stretch-stable> ?

In short, you need matching toolchains. For a given r-base-core package, you
need the corresponding r-cran-*

Personally, I don't use these backports. My 'development' work happens where
Debian is fresh and new ("unstable", and "testing"); my deployments at work
and elsewhere happens to be on Ubuntu (different story).

So I cannot speak to the state of these backports as that is a project by
Johannes outside of the official Debian scope.  He may chime in.

Dirk

[1] http://eddelbuettel.github.io/rcppapt/binnmuAfterR340.html

-- 
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org